


Losing a Name

by tokaku



Category: Joker Game (Anime)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Murder, different take on the Coffin incident
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 15:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7392133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokaku/pseuds/tokaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miyoshi's discarded past self surfaces in Germany, and it's more of a relief than he expected it to be.</p><p>"Don't die, don't kill." What happens when a monster can't follow those rules?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing a Name

Katsuhiko Maki was smoking one last cigarette in the W.C. of a Berlin-bound train, leaning against the body of one Ferdinand Lehman, recently deceased. 

Herr Lehman had come here after him. Maki had reacted instinctively to the arm that hooked over his head and threatened to block his windpipe by fighting, twisting around quickly before the man could draw him back and tighten the hold, and in the same movement delivering a palm strike to the man’s solar plexus, twisting his hand to increase the pain, fingertips folded against the bottom knuckles. It was an unmistakably practiced move. 

Quick to react but too slow to stop his reaction. He had gotten soft after one year in Germany. Lt Col Yuuki would not have been pleased.

He tried to clumsily retreat a second later, but dropped the act because it was too late by then. Herr Lehman obviously knew what to look for, and even after sagging to his knees and coughing, he had looked up with a triumphant glint to his eyes and smugly accused him of the truth. 

Katsuhiko Maki was born to an affluent family. It was well within the realm of possibility that he had had lessons on how to defend himself. But the fact that he was approached here already meant that there must be someone higher up whose sight he had not escaped from. Either way, he was in a precarious position. 

They had then smoothly moved on to negotiations, Maki flicking the switch at the door from green to red, to the laughable situation of two enemy spies occupying a single lavatory stall. Herr Lehman claimed to be affiliated with Oster, which meant this was an even more dangerous business than he initially expected. 

Department Z, or simply die Zentrale, Abwehr’s brain. Hitler didn’t have a solid powerbase, and it showed in who was in charge of German intelligence. 

This inner circle wanted all the information Katsuhiko Maki was supposed to forward to Japan. Not even to change anything, but simply to know what information was coming out. Like a kind uncle looking over his nephew’s schoolwork. A harmless deal on the surface. To believe all this on trust was foolish, but Herr Lehman seemed to think that Maki had no choice but to comply.

Maki didn’t do anything as uncouth and obvious as grind his teeth, and killed a wry laugh before it could bubble up to the surface. A spy’s life could be over in seconds, and he’s made that mistake earlier. The choice was to be a double spy and betray D-Agency, or pretend to be a double spy. 

“It seems very…” Maki paused, acting out worry, satisfied when he saw Herr Lehman’s lip curl slightly. “Undemanding,” Maki finished, tasting the word in his mouth with a meaningful look at Herr Lehman, who was still massaging his chest.

“That for now,” Lehman said. Whoever was the brains for this operation obviously wasn’t Lehman himself. He might have even been given the order to stand down and only watch, but he’d thought to cut through the chase boldly. Whatever connection he had with Oster must be very tenuous; this man was a piece to throw away. The fact that Miyoshi had to face him made him feel like another discarded piece; rook sacrificed for pawn. And the game continued.

But who were the players?

A year before, he would have thought Lt Col Yuuki was one of them with unfaltering confidence. He could believe in that if nothing else. But living softly as he had been doing as Katsuhiko Maki, and adopting his new identity’s weak character and beliefs, had created cracks in the veneer that was ‘Miyoshi.’ Abwehr was a force of around one thousand men and women, led by Canaris, and Oster under him. They have been manipulating information and playing Germany against itself, a pattern of giving support and being unable to, stealing information and leaking information, that showed what a dangerous game these men were playing. Miyoshi wasn’t sure yet of the goal, whether it was simply to depose Hitler or make the whole government crumble from inside, but he couldn’t see Lt Col Yuuki and D-Agency, with their very limited resources, stepping in as another player. The scope of what they were doing was too different.

D-Agency was still under the control of General Headquarters. This meant a tight dog’s leash, and only being allowed to follow the trail of information to wherever General Headquarters thought they should go. No dog biscuits after, as they expected all the spies to die in the course of the war. Might even help them to die after the war if they survived. Despite what they’ve told Lieutenant Sakuma before, the D-Agency spies were all aware of the inevitability of death and knew what to do in such an event.

Or Miyoshi thought he knew what he would do.

What he didn’t account for was how ill-fitting his ‘Miyoshi’ identity would be after a year. He was Katsuhiko Maki, with the art dealer’s fears and lack of expertise in anything outside of art. Politics and intrigue made him uneasy, and at this moment scared him rightly. When he discarded ‘Katsuhiko Maki’ so he could act as a spy again, he didn’t return to being ‘Miyoshi,’ but back to his more deeply entrenched child-self, which balked at the idea of having to take responsibility for a mistake. 

When Herr Lehman washed his hands in the sink, shaking off the beaded drops of water from his hands and still speaking smugly, _he_ stepped forward and slipped his arm around Lehman’s neck, a return of the move done to him earlier. He tightened it even before Lehman bucked against him, trying to straighten from his position leaning over the sink. Lehman jerked forward, but he ducked his head and hit the mirror with the top of his head instead of his face; not too hard to actually break the mirror, because Lehman was already weakening. He wasn’t blocking Lehman’s windpipe, but the blood flow to his brain. He kept his hold on Lehman, and in seconds, Lehman was sinking to the floor, losing consciousness.

He could stop now. He kept his hold, gripped more tightly.

After, when the pulse had well and truly stopped, he hooked Lehman’s upper body over the sink as he fished around for the man’s wallet. And possibly filch his cigarettes.

_Don’t die, don’t kill._

That was D-Agency’s motto. D-Agency was Miyoshi’s home, the only place that let him be not him. But he had had to leave Miyoshi behind for this mission. It occurred to him now that, even within Katsuhiko Maki, he had been planning this departure months in advance. Not this exact situation, of course, but an escape from the bland, normal, elegant, unthreatening mask that was Katsuhiko Maki. His meeting with Herr Leiche was proof, as it wasn’t even a contact approved by Lt Col Yuuki. It was something Yuuki shouldn’t even know about. Yuuki certainly hadn’t berated him for anything when he’d handed over the information earlier.

He hadn’t been defying orders, only pursuing a hobby on the side.

And now he had a corpse in the W.C., and was smoking the corpse’s Gauloise. Contemplating the corpse as if it was a new piece of art. Middle-aged, and his middle turning to flab, who would buy that.

Ha laughed, boyishly happy and unconcerned. Just amused by that strange picture.

He could probably return to his carriage, or go to the restaurant car and indulge in some wine. Leave Herr Lehman here, or maybe throw him out a door while the train was moving. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t encounter any of the staff. 

He had just decided that he was going for the wine, dropping the cigarette in the toilet and stepping on the water pedal to get rid of the butt, when the train gave a horrible lurch. There was the thin screaming of metal, and he was flung forward and then back, propelled up and to Herr Lehman, also newly airborne. Glass cracked and broke; the mirror, and possibly the windows. The lights cut off, and in the dark aftermath of the noisy crash— the train having punctured itself and its vulnerable fleshy passengers— there was agonized screaming.

Herr Lehman of course showed more politeness. Herr Lehman was quiet.

He struck a match.

He had fallen over Lehman’s body. Earlier, it had crashed into him, and he’d hit possibly the ceiling. He felt a dull throbbing pain in his shoulder and head, and tried to move his limbs experimentally. Nothing seemed to be broken. The W.C. was at the end of the train, and the entire carriage seemed to have been lifted and then had crashed back down onto its side. Something had sprung up from the floor, a bar of metal that had cut at an angle into Herr Lehman’s gullet, and now the floor under him had a growing puddle of blood. Somewhere beyond them, there was a broken pipe, and the sound of water.

He had fallen over Lehman’s legs, as if for a spanking. 

The metal had missed him entirely. He felt only small cuts on his hands, his heavy top coat covering him from most of the damage. His suit underneath it might not have been dirtied, but the top coat most definitely had blood, mirror shards, and grit. 

The light fizzled out. 

He closed his eyes, pocketing the spent match and relying on his other senses with the training he had received as Miyoshi. He returned Lehman’s wallet, slipping out some of the money from it first, and left the bathroom. 

Beyond the door, there was a bit of light from the moon, and the snow had even gotten in. There were no people in this part of the carriage, not even one of the staff. He might have been lucky earlier if he had gotten the chance to push out Lehman’s body from the train. 

He went back to his carriage, stepping around the bodies he did find and creeping even more softly around those who seemed to still be alive, groaning on the floor or calling for help from their compartments. His carriage was a mess, with one heavy bar seeming to have punctured one of the plush seats. He couldn’t see much else from the light. 

He reached up for his suitcase and found its latch already opened, but too heavy to lift up from the upper rack, abandoned. Well.

After a moment of simply sensing everything around him, he crouched down in front of the undamaged seat and reached under. Feeling hair under his fingers, he tugged, and the small boy it belonged to squawked a quiet protest, but allowed himself to be pulled out of hiding. It had only been a few minutes; this boy was quick. Or they were near enough to Berlin that the busy pickpockets from the city had started to go for the train’s unattended valuables.

“Where is this?” he asked.

The boy told him.

“Hmm.” He dropped the boy on one seat and took the other so he was facing the boy, speaking in a softer, friendlier whisper. “I’m still in luck then, if I’m so close. Do you know Doctor Meyr? Thin guy with small spectacles?” Aside from being a doctor practicing with no license, Meyr was an informant with a personal interest to keep Miyoshi safe.

The boy answered with the doctor’s street. 

He smiled, clapped his hands briefly in front of him like if he’d witnessed a magic trick. The boy froze at that for some reason, wary but not running. 

“Yes, that’s him,” Miyoshi said. “He’s my friend. Maybe you know someone who’s his patient?”

“My uncle. And sister,” the boy answered grudgingly, shifting, one ear out for anyone else moving in their part of the train. 

Miyoshi took out a small pad of paper from his pocket, frowning as he wrote on it almost practically blind, and handed not just the note but the whole pad to the boy. The young thief took it immediately, his body language still suggesting he was waiting for a chance to bolt, but was staying because he didn’t know what would be the right way, the safe way, to react to the situation.

“I’m indebted to him, too, and there’s something he needs to know,” Miyoshi said. The boy seemed more uneasy, the tells even in the moonlight obvious enough. He was feeling some panic now for what might hurt his family, his community. “Of course, I’ll be paying you. Deliver this message to him, and he’ll know what to do. Tell him to send a runner back instead of going himself. Wouldn’t want the poor doctor getting hurt.” 

He took out the wad of bills he had gotten from Lehman’s wallet and handed over half of it to the boy. The boy held out his hand, feeling the thickness of the bills with his fingers. 

Still, the thief hesitated. “Cigarettes, too,” he decided. It was nice that he’d negotiate that much for himself; Miyoshi could count more on his message getting delivered if the boy tried to leverage more from him instead of simply agreeing.

“Ah, yes.” Miyoshi reached in his pocket, feeling for his pack of cigarettes. Then he shrugged off his stained top coat instead, and handed it over to the boy. It had Lehman’s Gauloises. The boy felt the material with his fingers, shaking off some of the glass stuck to it. He shrugged the coat on. Then he nodded and crawled out the window, careful of the edges of the broken glass. The boy disappeared into the snow.

Probably around fifteen minutes had passed since he’d left Lehman’s corpse. There was a convenient corpse in the next compartment though, stuck half-out of the door. Careful to avoid stepping on anything incriminating and dirtying his shoes, he leaned down and pressed his fingers against the corpse’s wound. ‘Miyoshi’ would do something like this, he thought, carefully marking his collar. 

He fell quiet for a moment, thinking nothing in particular about what he was about to do. Then he went to work.

\--

\--

It was a shitty business, getting woken late enough that it was practically Saturday already. The police arrived first, followed by Hans’s group of volunteers there for the hospital. They had dogs sniffing about and the police striding all over looking official without actually helping, trying to see if the crash had been caused by a partisan attack. 

Of course, Berlin didn’t lift the blackout because of the train crash, and it was hard work hauling out the bodies, stopping to check cursorily for a pulse in the cases where the passengers weren’t moaning fitfully or obviously dead. The lanterns offered scant light, at least until it started to turn into morning. 

One of the dead was a woman with her head almost completely off. Another was a man with a punctured stomach. 

Still another was Asian, who appeared to be in pristine enough condition, at least until Hans had tried to move him, and Hans felt something cooling and wet squelching in his hand from a wound in the side he hadn’t noticed at first. He quickly rubbed it off on the man’s suit, but whatever part had been punched out of the body had mostly fallen inside the shirt rather than out of it, giving one side a slightly lumpy look. The Asian man’s eyes were half-open, as if he was going to close his eyes but froze instead like that, unable to complete the movement. 

It was the first untidy corpse he had to handle himself. 

This corpse was loaded into another stretcher. Hans didn’t even bother checking for a pulse, but the doctor who came with them stopped briefly and did, obviously without much hope, then shook his head. He felt against the side at the lumpy part Hans had noted earlier, and the doctor moved the jagged hole in the shirt briefly to look underneath at the wound. 

The blood had crystallized because of the cold, like on the other corpses, and the wound itself wasn’t actually gaping, except some of the man’s guts had apparently been dislodged from the wound by whatever might have pierced him. The doctor jotted something down on his notepad, sharp and brisk: _Shock. Death by blood loss_.

There was a quicker team working to whisk the wounded back to the hospital. It was just Hans’s bad luck at work that he was stuck with the team bearing away the dead. Or maybe it was good luck. The wounded were sometimes in worse condition. 

Some of the wounded were sent to smaller hospitals to receive quicker treatment, and also to not overflow Berlin with so many wounded when the pessimistic higher ups believed they might expect more at any moment. But the dead bodies were all taken back to Berlin. The policemen were rounding up people; Hans saw some men being escorted to an open truck. There were shouts as one of the men tried to make a run for it. A short chase, and then violence. 

Hans felt a tired sort of hate at the sight, not feeling particularly sympathetic. If it _had_ been a partisan group that had bombed the rails or something, Hans hoped they were all hunted down and shot.

**Author's Note:**

> I did some research, but please don’t expect everything to be historically accurate. Here are some notes that you might want to know though:
> 
> At the time of this story (1940), Germany had frequent blackouts so cities weren’t visible at night. This was due to bombing raids.
> 
> There was also no forced conscription yet, though of course Germany was all too aware of resource management. That’s probably why Miyoshi’s body was given civilian watchers, because even if Colonel Wolff was all for abandoning everything for his fox hunt and might have wanted guards everywhere, he just didn’t have the personnel. His superiors might not appreciate his paranoia either if it wasted resources, and we know his subordinates didn’t like being removed from their regular duties to do this.
> 
> Hospitals wouldn’t have held on to unclaimed bodies for long because the hospitals had to be ready for emergencies. It was war after all. I was also told that it would have been more likely for the bodies to be incinerated rather than buried, but, er. Well, at least we know from the story that that didn’t happen!
> 
> Also, I borrowed Ferdinand Lehman from the list of casualties.
> 
> The next part would be from Colonel Wolff’s side, though it involves a different case. Colonel Wolff meets Herr Leiche, a 'professional corpse.'


End file.
